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A Look Inside My 2018 Bookish Notebook

Does anyone else collect all of the pretty notebooks? I know I’m not alone in buying way more notebooks than I know what to do with, and last year I started looking for some creative ways to make use of them. And one of those things is giving a yearly snapshot of my reading.

Obviously this isn’t something I need as much now that I have a blog, but since I still have a ton of pretty notebooks and I like handwriting things, I decided to continue with it in 2018.

The actual notebook featured here is a May Designs notebook. I love May Designs because they’re so fun and have some of the best patterns, plus I like the paper and they size the lines perfectly for my handwriting (none of that wide-ruled nonsense). With 80 pages, they’re not as long as I would like, but that also gives me an excuse to fill them up quickly and move on to the next one in my collection, so I’m not too upset about it.

If you’re interested in getting your own May Designs notebook, I would recommend signing up for emails from them and waiting until they do another 50 percent off sale, as they tend to do them a few times a year and it makes them more affordable.

On the very first page, you’ll see that I’ve written out my reading goals for the year so they’re front and center. It’s really important to me that I meet these goals, so I like having them there as a reminder every time I open this notebook.

Next is my list of the personal challenges I’ve set for myself with stars for the ones I’m prioritizing. In case you don’t remember from my 2018 Reading Goals post, I definitely want to complete the starred tasks, and I’d generally like to complete at least 20 of these various challenges throughout the year.

Next up is the list of books that I purchased throughout 2017 and still haven’t read. I’ll cross these off as I go through them and try to get them all read in 2018.

Following the list of 2017 TBR books is the Read Harder Challenge tasks with room for me to write in what books I wind up using to meet the challenge. I also have a page for this on my blog for others who are interested in seeing my progress on the challenge.

Then I have two pages set aside for my 2018 Goodreads Challenge. Basically I just like having a simple list to see what books I all read throughout the year. Obviously I don’t expect all of the books I read to fit on these two pages, but I’ll just add a new page or so later in the notebook as these ones fill up.

Next I put my list of 18 Books to Read in 2018 so I can keep track of those and cross them off as they’re accomplished (such a satisfying feeling!), as well as the series I’m currently reading and need to finish or catch up on. I’d kind of like to whittle this list down before I start any new series.

This spread is a place for me to track my purchases in 2018. As I work on improving my book purchasing habits, I think it’s helpful to have a list of everything I’m buying throughout the year. You’ll also note that I track where I purchase books from and what format I buy them in, just because that’s something I’m interested in knowing. And again, I’ll extend this list onto pages later in this notebook as necessary once I fill up these two pages.

In the same vein, I created a list of books that I received from publishers and in what format so I can make sure I’m either reading and reviewing these books or passing them along to someone else who’s interested in them.

Oh, and you might have noticed that I numbered the pages. I keep a table of contents in the back to make it easier for me to find things, especially when some of the lists start spanning several pages.

For now that’s it, but I also like using this notebook to journal about book-related events that I go to, like signings or BookCon. I kind of view this notebook as a time capsule for my 2018 book-related experiences, so I like writing down some of my thoughts about these events in my notebook. And while I occasionally blog about them, some of them I don’t have enough to say about to justify a full blog post. Plus I try to keep the focus of my posts on things that are interesting to you as a reader, so I cut out a lot of my impressions or personal experiences from the events and put those in my notebook instead.

I’ll also put monthly wrap ups in here showing how many books I read, what genres they were from, what format I read them in, etc., and of course at the end of the year I’ll write down all of the statistics that I gather.

But yeah, that’s my 2018 bookish notebook! I try to go back and update it at least once a month or so, and I just think it’s a handy place to look back and reflect on my reading throughout the year, in addition to help me stay on track with my goals and reading challenges. I think it’ll be fun to flip back through these later in life.

Do you keep any sort of notebook dedicated to books? Let me know in the comments, along with what your favorite part of my bookish notebook is!

I have the dusty rose one! I love it, I just wish the grommet weren’t so big because it messes with my writing when I try to write on the left side pages, but fortunately the notebooks are easy enough to pull out when necessary.